Institute for Animal Studies

Animal Ordering

Purchase of experimental animals at Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Einstein) must be coordinated through the Institute for Animal Studies (IAS). Each animal must be housed and used under an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) approved animal use protocol* belonging to a member of the Einstein faculty. Animal purchase and housing requires a valid General Ledger (G/L) account number from Grant Accounting to pay purchase charges and daily cage charges (i.e., per diem charges). Animal orders may be placed:

in person: IAS office, 460 Van Etten, or

by fax: 718.862.1886 718.862.1887

Deadlines

Orders must be placed by Wednesday at 12:00 noon for animals for delivery the following week. Animal orders for The National Institute for Aging (NIA) must be placed by Tuesday at 12:00 noon.

NOTE: These deadlines are subject to change the week during which a holiday occurs. Please contact the IAS (718.839.7100) if a Holiday falls the week you want to place an order.

IAS staff will notify Principal Investigators or Department Administrators (Administrators) only if there is a problem with animal availability or delivery. Otherwise, newly received animals will be unpacked and housed in their assigned animal rooms. Principal Investigators (PIs) should check their assigned animal room for their animals within a day or two following expected arrival. Any problems with the new arrivals should be reported immediately to the IAS office, so they can assist you in obtaining credit and replacements.

Approved Commercial Vendors

Approved vendors are reliable commercial sources of experimental animals that have an established history of providing high quality animals that are free of known health problems. Approved vendors supply the IAS with regular periodic health reports documenting the health quality of their animals and promptly notify the IAS of any health problems that emerge. Rodents, xenopus frogs, guinea pigs, ferrets, and rabbits arriving from approved vendors will be placed directly into animal rooms without quarantine. Primates, carnivores, and farm animals arriving from approved vendors, however, usually must complete a customized quarantine period before they are released for experimental use. Please see “Procedures for Obtaining Animals”.

Note: If animals are requested to be purchased from a vendor that does not have “approved vendor” status, the purchase request will be considered on a case-by-case basis by the Director of the Institute for Animal Studies. Animals that are purchased from non-approved vendors will require quarantine. (See Importing Animals From Another Institution below.)

*The plan for carrying out a scientific study or a treatment regimen.

Approved Contract Antibody Facilities

For research involving custom antibody production in species, although it occurs off-campus, you are required to haven an animal use protocol approved by the IACUC. Once you have an approved animal use protocol, you should place orders for custom antibody production with a vendor that appears on the list of Approved Contract Antibody Facilities